Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, Joseph Zito)

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter never tries to be scary. It tries to be gory… but not too gory. It saves the biggest gore moment for the last, when any number of the other ones throughout the film would’ve given Tom Savini better material. It’s supposed to be gory, but not too gory. It still has to be mainstream.

And The Final Chapter is a desperate attempt to fulfill the mainstream expectations of a Friday the 13th movie. There’s pointless nudity, dumb coeds, scary music, a kid with a horror movie fixation. Except Zito can’t do any of it right. He does best on the exploitation of his female cast, but even that is inept because of his direction. Zito shoots everything in a medium-long shot, straight on so the pan and scan video release won’t miss any of the technically competent, but entirely unimaginative gore.

Worse, Zito has a screenwriter in Barney Cohen who give him okay scary setups. Zito flops on all of them. Occasionally it’ll be something as simple as needing Harry Manfredini’s (admittedly somewhat lame this entry) score over a scene instead of the scenic sound. There’s not a single good thing Zito does in the film.

Except the opening tracking shot tying it to the previous series entry.

Lots of bad acting, but also an almost good one from Crispin Glover and okay ones from Kimberly Beck and Barbara Howard.

One scare out of The Final Chapter shouldn’t have been asking too much.

ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Joseph Zito; screenplay by Barney Cohen, based on a story by Bruce Hidemi Sakow and characters created by Victor Miller, Ron Kurz, Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson; director of photography, João Fernandes; edited by Daniel Loewenthal and Joel Goodman; music by Harry Manfredini; production designer, Shelton H. Bishop III; produced by Frank Mancuso Jr.; released by Paramount Pictures.